The process of importing and exporting containers and goods at a port involves multiple parties and requires significant communication and coordination. In addition, the parties involved must adhere to numerous regulations and guidelines.
Systems known as Terminal Operating Systems (TOS) have been developed to support this process at port terminals around the world. Many of the standard operating procedures related to activities at the terminal, such as import and export functions, have become a part of these TOS applications, although they are implemented differently.
However, aspects such as exception management, real-time exception management, TOS-agnostic software/platforms/components and other interrelated functionality are areas that have not been adequately addressed by existing Terminal Operating Systems.
The shipping industry, as briefly described in FIG. 1, includes both the actual transport of goods from and to overseas, but also the interface with port facilities and third parties. As FIG. 1 shows, there are multiple parties involved in the transportation of goods through port facilities, and the port interfaces are capable of introducing delays in the overall shipping time.
For example, an SSCO (Steamship Company) may submit a booking that includes specific counts and types of containers. For each container, attributes such as dimensions, etc. are specified. When an entity associated with such container (e.g., driver etc.) comes to the terminal to process or deliver the container, the attributes of one or more containers may not match the specified attributes of the booking. In this scenario, such entity typically will not be allowed to deliver the container until the booking information matches the container.
In the past, issues such as the one described above required a significant amount of communication and paperwork between parties to understand the nature of the problem and to update or correct the information so that the entity could continue with the desired handling of the container(s).